Larry Boatright, Community Life Pastor of The Orchard, recently post an article at The Origins Project.

I was so inspired, I had to paste this snippet! Read the full article here.

"I think a pretty dramatic shift is occurring regarding innovation and the church. For so long, the conversation has centered around the church creating a new program, ministry, or innovative initiative to meet needs. There’s been an unhealthy culture of dependence on the “professionals” to drive innovation. We find a need, we design a plan, we allocate funding and resources, find a leader, and move on to the next innovative task. But I think that’s changing. More and more followers of Jesus are heeding the call to make a difference, to demonstrate the love of Christ themselves rather than depending on the church to do it all. And this, honestly, sets pastors up to make a pretty dramatic shift as well.

So many pastors are simply exhausted from being the CEO of an organization that drives and creates innovation. They signed up to shepherd a people, to reach a community, but lay in bed at night feeling like they are pimping a product, trapped in a cycle that is dependent on their ability to create, create, create. What if pastors made a dramatic shift in the way they did things?

What if they shifted from being drivers of innovation to being cultivators of innovators?"

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Similar to the idea of multiplication vs addition, creating disciples vs appeasing spectators. If we can train church attendees to "do the work of the ministry" then an exponentially greater amount of work can be done.

What are the challenges involved with being a "cultivator of innovators" vs being a "driver of innovation"?